


Scars

by MarinaScarlet



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Episode: s01e08 Desperate Souls, Episode: s01e12 Skin Deep, Episode: s01e13 Dreamy, Episode: s02e09 Queen of Hearts, Episode: s02e11 The Outsider, F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-14
Updated: 2013-01-14
Packaged: 2017-11-25 10:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarinaScarlet/pseuds/MarinaScarlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The scars we try to hide are the ones who haunt our dreams, when the day is at its darkest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scars

**Author's Note:**

> I got the idea of this by seeing the amazing fanart of the Rumbelle scars by mmm-juicy-fruit (in Tumblr). Also, this got my own theories about the scars, and I based some scenes of Belle only in the promotional photos of her in The Outsider in FTL. This contains spoilers. You’ve been warned.  
> http://trashandscraps.tumblr.com/post/39997031059/rumbelle-and-their-scars

She felt the cold of the cell, its darkness too. The clothes she was wearing didn't keep her as warm as she wished to be. The chains that were on her wrists and her ankles hurt her; it was as if they were burning her skin, engraving in it her fate: captured, trapped, and locked away. The memories about the last months made her cry: she had tasted love, freedom, adventure. She had tried everything she always wanted to do.

She had met Rumpelstiltskin, the most powerful wizard of all the land, and with him, she knew what a true love’s kiss was. But also the pain of been sent away by him; the fact, true or not, that his power meant more to him than his love for her hurt Belle. She knew he had darkness inside him, but he also had light; it was really weak and was difficult to be seen, but it existed.

She also had known a dwarf who had fallen in love and didn't know anything about it. She had helped him, and she really hoped he had found his happy ending. She had given him one of the best advices she'd ever known: you have to enjoy love because it doesn't last forever. That was a really valuable advice, and although she missed Rumpelstiltskin, she really enjoyed each moment she spent with him; she kept those memories as treasures.

She had blade a sword with a girl called Mulan. Both had been looking for a monster that was destroying towns; a huge reward was offered. Belle had learnt that that monster hide also some powerful magic and she wanted to find it; that would have come in handy to restore Rumpelstiltskin's humanity, and to keep his magic; she knew if she found it and explained everything to Rumpelstiltskin, he would agree to use that magic on him. But things never go as they are planned or meant to be...  
  
Mulan and she were on the lands that the monster owned, its castle wasn't so far from their position. The fight they had in the evening with the people of the village had ended in an acceptable way; Belle was almost being sent to the darkest prison of the town, which was hidden in a well. Mulan was trying to set a deal with the landlord of the town about the horses, the supplies and the rooms when she heard Belle' screams. Two men have took her from the feet and were about to put her in the well; they have heard that she was Sir Maurice's daughter, the one who had been with the Dark One in his castle, and surely she had information for those ones who wanted to took his power or even his treasures. But Belle didn't say anything, her lips were sealed.

Mulan came in the right moment, she was blading her sword at the same time she screamed to that man to leave Belle alone.  
  
\- What do you think you are doing?  
\- She had worked for the Dark One, she' a valuable source of information. - One of them said. - We're going to lock her so we can obtain what we want.  
\- I will never say anything about Rumpelstiltskin! I won't betray him! - Belle said at the same time she tried to get out of the men's control.  
\- I won't say it twice: LET HER OUT. - Mulan pointed one of the men with her sword.

Belle saw a free spot and she hit one of them with her right feet; the other left her left feet free, so she rolled from the top of the well to the ground, at the same time she pulled out her sword. Mulan and she were pointing at them.  
  
 - Belle, are you okay?  
\- Yes, I am. It could have been worse, don't you think?  
\- Of course... I think we need to get rid of these "gentlemen", if they can be called like that. - She got closer to one of them. - Why you wanted to capture Belle?  
\- She has information that an important person wants.  
\- Who is that person? - Mulan started to get angry.  
\- I can't tell; I would die if I reveal who were working for...  
\- Tell us. If you don't, we will use you as a trap to capture the monster. If you tell it, we will let you free and this fight would be forgotten. That's a fair deal, isn't it?  
\- I won't say a word. - The man said, challenging Mulan.  
\- Okay, then. Belle, prepare the rope. I think the monster will like their flesh...  
\- Please! Don't offer us as sacrifices for the monster! I will tell you who asked us to lock her. - The man stopped. - Her name is Regina, the Evil Queen. The one who has the control of all these lands.  
\- I know her. Rumpel told me about her plans and her ways to get information. She's really evil.  - Painful memories started to appear in Belle's mind.  
\- Had she told you why did she wanted Belle captured? - Mulan asked.  
\- We don't know why she wants her, but I suppose it's because she knows Rumpelstiltskin better than anyone.  
\- We've heard everything we wanted to know from these two... Get away from our sight NOW! - Mulan pushed them out from their position and she got closer to Belle. - Are you hurt?  
\- No, I'm perfectly fine, really. - She looked around their position. - Everybody seems to know who I am. - Belle sighed. That upset her, she was sure that plenty or rumours about her had been spread since she accepted to go with Rumpelstiltskin.  
\- Do you really know who you are, Belle?  
\- What do you mean?  
\- Those people only know the rumours, the bad things. They don't know the real you. I'd say that a very few people know who you are.  
\- You're right, Mulan. I don't have to care about the rumours, only about the ones who want to hurt me.  
\- Don't forget your loved ones; they are even more important than the enemies.

Belle and Mulan started to walk together to the house of the landlord; their journey to the monster's castle would start that evening.

\----------------------------

The forest was dark, and they could barely see the moon. They didn't have any torches with them, the light could discover their position, and that would risk the whole mission. They didn't talk either, they spoke by signs.

Suddenly, Belle stopped. She heard a noise coming from the road. She alerted Mulan.

\- I heard a noise coming from the main road. - She whispered.  
\- It may have been the wind.  
\- No, it wasn't. It was the sound of a carriage or something similar. Maybe someone has  
followed us.  
\- How you can be so sure?  
\- That town doesn't seem very trustful. The people stared at us all the time and the landlord didn't seem to be a man who keeps secrets.  
\- Do you think he could have revealed our mission?  
\- Maybe. We should be really awake, with our eyes wide open. - Belle pulled out her sword. - Don't blink and let's stay side by side. We're going to do this.  
\- People were right, you are really brave, and you don't stop at anything. When you want something, you don't give up at getting it. You've found somebody worth fighting for, Belle. Rumpelstiltskin gives you that strength.  
\- I... I think so. - She blushed, although her friend couldn't see it. - Come on, we're really close.

Both started to walk again through the forest, quietly, blading their swords. They started to see the main road that lead to the monster's castle; the hardest part of the mission was about to start.

They were walking the road, and a sound make them put their backs against each other; their swords were prepared to attack to anything or anybody who appeared. But Mulan didn't saw the man who pulled her to the ground. Belle just stared to their friend, fear and the amount of men that were around her and Mulan paralyzed her. She turned her head and she saw a familiar face.

\- Regina...  
\- It's good to see you remember me, young lady...  
\- What do you want from me?  
\- I just wanted to give an apology for my advice. I'm sorry it ended up that way.  
\- He thought I was working for you.  
\- And indeed, you were working for me. You were so close of getting him into a human again...  
\- Don't dare to play with me, Regina. Why you were so sure we were true love?  
\- Your eyes and your face when I told you about the True Love's kiss, Belle. I know you were with him in the Dark Castle, and I also knew that he sent you away. I've got spies in the entire kingdom to see what the people do.  
\- You're such an evil person, Regina. - Belle started to walk towards her. - You're despicable.  
\- Oh, child... You don't know what I'm capable of to get what I want. - Regina raised a hand. - Guards! Catch the lady!

Belle couldn't react in time and four men caught her. They pulled her into a carriage with a jail. Mulan tried to rise from the ground but a guard pushed her again to the ground with the feet.

\- Mulan! MULAN!  
\- Belle! Don't worry about me; just stay quiet and safe, please! I know she won’t harm you! You’re really useful to her!  
\- Mulan, defend yourself! – She tried to get her sword again but a man treaded her hand. – Rise again, please! Don’t give up! We can make this! – Belle sound desperate.  
\- Guards! Take the dragon lady to the monster’s castle. She can be used as a gift for it... – Regina smiled at the same time she approached Belle with her horse. – And as your friend said... You’re really valuable to me. But that doesn’t mean that I could harm you a little if you neglect to collaborate with me.  

The guards tied Mulan with rope and forced her to walk towards the castle. She was broken; her friend had been sent to a secure death and she couldn’t help her.

\- I won’t take part in your plans. I won’t betray him.  
\- Oh, I’m pretty sure you’ll do. You will help me to kill Rumpelstiltskin.  
\- I refuse to do it!  
\- I will keep you apart from him forever. You’re never going to get back together. I promise I will do that.

A single tear rolled over Belle’s cheek. The plan that Mulan and her had prepared had the worst ending possible. All hope was gone.

\- Listen to me, Regina. Listen to me. –Anger could be heard in her voice. – If we are meant to be together, we will find the way. I found somebody who is worth fighting for. I will fight for Rumpelstiltskin. You can’t keep us apart! I will never stop fighting for him! – Her voice finally broke down and she started to cry. Regina had won.

The carriage started to move, and she only sat down, looking at the night sky, wondering if Mulan had escaped from the monster. That worried her so much; she really hoped that her friend was alive.

The journey to Regina’s castle lasted a day and a half; food, water and a blanket were provided to her as she was in the jail. Regina wanted her alive, and she obviously tried to buy her with such tricks. But she wasn’t going to allow that.

When they arrived to the domains of the Evil Queen, Belle was forced to do the path from the main road to the castle by foot. It wasn’t very long, but the snow made it more difficult than it was. She was lead to the castle dungeons, settled in the highest tower; hers was in the highest floor, the last one.

It was a wide room, with a skylight and a bed. The girl was forced to take off her clothes and to wear a really short blue dress. Then, when she was dressed as a Regina’s prisoner, the jailer put in her hands and in her ankles chains. They were long enough to walk around the whole room but they represented the lack of freedom and the symbol of being captured.

The first days were the worst ones: the chains started to mark Belle’s ankles and wrists, as if they were fire. She didn’t move so much in those days, each step was an immense pain that brought her to tears. She managed to write down on the walls of the dungeon how many days she had spent there with a piece of chalk she found under the pillow. “ _Maybe the last prisoner who was in this cell left it...”_ she thought as she put the mark on the wall of the first day.

The girl had been in the prison for nearly five years. All the walls of the room had white marks of chalk in it. Five years of being alone, suffering, thinking about all her loved ones, about how their lives were now. How about her true love was, if he had missed her at some point of those years.

Those thoughts make her feel sad and devastated, and she spent most of the nights crying, remembering all she had, and what she lost.

Regina went to visit her some times, just only to check she was still alive. The Queen never asked Belle about Rumpelstiltskin, and that surprised the girl. If she was supposed to hide so much information, why she didn’t tortured her to get it? Why she wanted her alive? And one day, she suddenly understood it all.

A powerful curse was about to being casted, and it was going to take everybody in the land to another place, a horrible one, in which magic didn’t exist and the Queen could get her revenge on Snow White.

In that new land, everybody wouldn’t remember the Fairy Tale Land; everybody would lose their memory about this life. Rumpelstiltskin would forget about her, and same thing was going to happen to her. She wanted to hurt him. But not only them: the entire kingdom was going to suffer the curse.

She wanted to go and find him, tell that Regina was going to such thing; she had to alert him so he could use his magic to stop her. But that was impossible for her: chained, trapped, isolated, alone. She could try to call his name three times, to see if he could come, but she thought that the Queen had put barriers and magic walls so he would never hear her calling, neither could he come to rescue her.

A man went to her cell one day; he told her he was her saviour, he was going to set her free. Belle had never seen him, and she trusted him. But he lied to her: he only wanted to know how to kill Rumpelstiltskin. He hit her in the face and she fainted. She woke up with an intense pain in the left side of her face; the mark of a hand was there. It hurt. Everything hurt in that moment. She felt foolish, but also brave for stand for the one who she loved. But she was still trapped, and with another mark in her body.

Tears started to run freely through her cheeks.

 All hope was gone, vanished, like the smoke in the rain.

The curse came, and before she got eaten by that black cloud, she thought about everyone she had met in that world, but her last thought was for Rumpelstiltskin. As the black wind transported her to the land without magic, in her last breath, she managed to whisper:

**_Please, remember me._ **

And she disappeared.

\--------------------------------------------

She opened her eyes, looking for sunlight, but she didn’t find it. The place where she was lying was a small bed in a cell, very dark. Not much light was allowed to get into that place.

She had a headache, as she didn’t slept very well. Her right ankle was chained to the wall, and it hurt. She also had a wound in the left one, as well as in her wrists.

And then, she remembered.

She was in the asylum.

Her father sent her there because she repeated the words “Remember me” all day, without any reason. She didn’t know why she was saying that all the time; it was like if there was something in her mind that pushed her to do that.

She also remembered the treatment she had the first day she got there, which lasted for weeks. Shock therapy, electroshocks... Each time she thought about it, an immense pain was spread all over her body.

Her throat hurt too. She could barely speak.

Tears were all over her face. She only wanted that nightmare to end.

She didn’t know how much time had passed, although she was sure there had passed months, or maybe a year, when the chain of her left feet was removed. But she didn’t want to walk around the room: her will had been destroyed, and so her hope of being free.

She casted a very loud scream, saying her name, as she closed her eyes, letting the angst and the suffering run through her veins.

She was a bird in a cage.

\--------------------------------------

She opened her eyes as she rose from the bed urgently, covered in sweat. She looked around her, and she saw Rumpelstiltskin was by her side. She was crying, the nightmare had been horrible; she had remembered all her life in the Fairy Tale Land, but only the bad things.

Rumpel’s hand touched her shoulder.

\- Belle! What happened?  
\- I had a nightmare; I remembered when Regina locked me up both here and in our land. I remembered the cold, the chains...  
\- Was it a vivid dream?  
\- Yes, it was. It was as if I was back there in those places. – She breathed deeply, trying to calm herself down. – My... My scars. – Belle tried to hide them under her night gown. – They are burning.    
\- Let me see them, please. – Rumpelstiltskin asked it gently and softly, soothing her.

Belle pulled the sheets out, and he didn’t like what he saw: the scars looked as if they were very recent. There weren’t any blood, but they were hotter than any other part of her body.  She was really scared, her body was shaking. It wasn’t the first time she had those nightmares, neither Rumpelstiltskin. His knee was like that too; he also had a dream about his past.

He dreamed about when he was just a boy, learning to spin, and he was taken away from his family to fight against the ogres.

Fear could be smelled in the battlefield; all those young men who were ought to fight to such big and powerful creatures. Their weapons were small and they didn’t hurt at all them. They were the ogres’ meal.

When he saw in front of him one of the creatures, a really huge and violent one, he threw his sword to the ground and started to run without any concrete direction. He wanted to live, not to be killed by one of them. No, that wasn’t made for him. In his frenetic run, he crossed paths with a high range soldier, who tried to stop him, but fear had taken control of Rumpelstiltskin’s body, and he pushed the soldier, throwing him to the ground. He yelled something, and he blade his sword.

He felt how blood was starting to appear in his leg, the flesh of his leg cut. The man who was in the ground threw him a dagger who hit him in the knee.

He got lost in the forest, and he spent there the next four days, with his wound growing bad. His right leg barely moved; he only could limp. His luck went even worse when an ogre found him. He stayed quiet as it passed, but he stepped on a tree branch that alerted the ogre of his presence. Rumpelstiltskin tried to run, but it picked up him by his hurt leg, making him scream of the pain. The ogre opened his mouth, but he managed to nail down a small knife in its eye, killing him.

He felt to the ground and the ogre too. His leg was almost destroyed; he thought he was going to die there. Fortunately, a healer lived in that forest, and he took Rumpel to his cabin to take care of him.

But it was too late: his right leg was going to be damaged forever.

He went back to his village, and the news had flown: everybody knew that he had run from the battlefield and he had hid in the forest. He was the coward of the village. The label he couldn’t quit.

Milah was ashamed of his husband; she was lashed to the village’s coward, as she said once. Their life, from that moment on, wasn’t going to be happy or good, except for the birth of their son, Baelfire.

Rumpelstiltskin would never forget how he became such a labelled person, without any way to change it; no one would listen to his version of what happened.

It was going to be his crush.

\-----------------------------------------

Belle was holding him tight, as she tried to calm herself and to sleep; she was still in shock. Tears were still coming from her eyes, and he didn’t know what to do to soothe her.

\- Belle, please... Stop crying. It was just a dream.  
\- But I felt everything again, Rumpelstiltskin. Every bad thing that happened to me, everything that left a mark in my body... They are pain, suffering. They are engraved in my skin.  
\- But you don’t have to worry now. I’m by your side; I’m taking care of you.  
\- But you can’t protect me from the nightmares. You can’t swim into my dreams and making it disappear.  
\- The memories can be erased, or blocked, and so your dreams. – He looked into Belle’s eyes. – Although our scars hurt, although our painful memories haunt our dreams, although we cry and suffer because of them, they can only reach us in the dream realm. We’re safe here. And I promise I’ll try to make your dreams better. I’ll try to stop the bad ones.  
\- How?  
\- Just sleeping by your side.


End file.
